COMMENSAL ISSUE 104

Theo (C103/9) - Genetic Engineering : Remember I am not attempting to resolve your problem, only to raise points you may wish to take into account in evolving some solution or partial solution of your own.

I am not so sure you can comfortably set aside the parental right of a bull to have its offspring arrive as nature delivers it. Suppose later in genetic engineering we produce a bull that is quite intelligent. The bull will surely take a harsh view if it then catches us tampering with the style of its offspring in some way it does not like. Could we claim the bull has no right to resort to law. How might we defend our action. What penalty might a court inflict upon us. Is it not the case that, even though we know more is to come in evolution, we assume the parental bull is and always will be an idiot, and then go on with the further assumption that an idiot has no views we need take into account.

Alternatively, could we claim there is a duty on the parental bull to let us experiment with its offspring for the good of ...... what; science, the general good, the good of cattle, the good of the offspring or of the offspring's offspring, the good of ourselves. But if we claim the last would that not create an implicit duty upon us to genetically engineer ourselves to have some kind of bull-brain addition, so we may better communicate with and understand the views of bulls.

Probably we actually have only one duty and one right in respect of cattle. Where we have the ability we have the duty to interfere clinically with parent or offspring when they are injured or ill. Where milk and meat are a vital part of our survival diet we have the right to take the milk and meat of the parent or offspring. We have this right because if the roles were reversed then cattle would have the same duty and right in their treatment of us. And one might care to consider what further duties and rights one would care to grant cattle if such a reversal came about; none I suspect.

But we want more. We always do. To obtain it we will bend our moral and legal codes to suit what we want to do. And the way we will do it is simply by changing the problem from an uncomfortable argument about whether we should do it, into a comfortable argument about how we should do it. Which will let us drift it all into some occasionally followed legislation and guide lines that set out "best practice". The implications of which two words should always be considered in depth in whatever field they are applied, because under them the system can proceed without having to think much about what it is doing whilst the rest of us can busily forget all about whatever the original question was.

To deal with two additional points simultaneously. You separately mention that there should be some limiting scope to the issue and that bulls are at present in fact outside the scope of much said earlier and above. I happily concede in both. But I think that eases nothing. In this question it is not what applies now, it is very much more what might come to apply if we proceed. And, in which case, the boundaries are then where-so-ever all the possibilities happen to be, and not necessarily where one might prefer them to be. Also, I suggest the fact bulls are at present not themselves parties to the discussion is in itself great reason we be that much more cautious. We are, after all, about to sentence the victim, and in truth we only consider the matter at all because if we get it wrong, then, step by step, we could destroy ourselves; and we know it.

Further. The polio virus is naturally invasive. Is it better to be rid of it, to be rid of ourselves, or to engineer it so it lives elsewhere, or makes a harmless guest, or to engineer ourselves so we live elsewhere, or may happily accommodate it. And, if an intelligent peanut turns up one day, will we have a case if we say we engineered your kind so they will not harm the allergic of us when they eat you or your babies. Surely we rest it all on an assumption evolution has achieved best practice and produced us.

Theo (C103/10) - Sanity : I think essentially you have in mind a question as to whether a genius can use the guide lines I set out to determine they are sane relative to the bulk of the population. I think it is accommodated where I said a question the subject may ask of themselves is whether in regard to some view they particularly hold they can understand the grounds by which most others have a different view. You will see this test is independent of how correct either view is and is much more to do with the dictionary's sanity requirement that the subject is able to perceive and understand the content of the world around them irrespective of whether or not they agree with it. With your suggestion a person is sane if their beliefs are held for defensible reasons, here I would only say what the dictionary says means sanity has a wording that seems very carefully crafted.

Theo (C103/10) - the Great Void (Second attempt!) : The trouble is a lot of the terminology is ambiguous and some say certain things do not exist whilst others say they do exist. I tried, probably too much, to accommodate every point of view. Suppose that universe means everything, including space and time as two energy fields, out to the assumed present boundary arising from the Big Bang That there is a heaven that contains its own similar things and constitutes a second universe. That if there is anything else then for simplicity it is either included as part of the two preceding universes or forms some third universe. Then, let universe, heaven and third universe, comprise the greater universe. What is left is that the greater universe is within a void that is not made of any form of energy, has no space or time, and is a great nothing.

What can we say of this void except it must be infinite in both extent and duration, always boundless, always present, and that it is a closed system. And, on inserting the greater universe in it, if anywhere in the void energy is not infinite in density then the energy of the greater universe in the void is finite.

Now, we know that locally energy is not infinitely dense, so, the greater universe is finite, and because the definitions imply energy can not enter or leave it, also it is a closed system.

Further, because energy can not be created or destroyed and can not enter or leave a closed system, we can say the greater universe always has and always will be made up of precisely the same amount of unstable energy it is presently made up of, and though its form has, is and will be subject to change, it also has always and will always be, with no beginning or end to it.

And all that put together means the greater universe has already been through an infinite number of cycles everywhere and will go through an infinite number of cycles more everywhere.

We can now look at life in this scenario. A box of matches is divisible. Separate the matches and box and fire can not be created. Bring them together and there are two ways to make fire, the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is obvious. The hard way is to rub the wood of the match-stick against the wood of the box until friction does its work. I mention this only to illustrate there is flexibility in the rules for starting a fire, and flexibility in the system permits a great deal.

Grafting of plants demonstrates that life is divisible and combinable. Brain surgery will presumably demonstrate the same for intelligence, and one day soul surgery may also quite well show the same for goodness. Quanta of life, intelligence and goodness can not be created or destroyed. Therefore they are energy. So, redefining energy as entity. The amount of entity in the void is finite and fixed, and, in its various forms, always was, is and always will be the greater universe in all its forms.

Thus, the big bang was an explosion of entity, has happened an infinite number of times before everywhere and will happen an infinite number of times again everywhere. And, life, intelligence and goodness had no beginning and will have no end.

For the theologically minded. In the above, God is assumed to be part of heaven, with God being something like a vastly more powerful version of the Big Bang proto-particle, perhaps like a crystalline quark star in which data could be processed in incredible quantities at incredible rates, where the power to action a decision would be near limitless, with action and momentum in the void being achieved simply by the star sending part of itself as an active probe to deploy its parts into the form desired, akin to a fire-work, a way of creating a universe in nothing. And heaven is some sort of entity field possessed by and around the star, part of it. This star would of course be able to manipulate space and time within the greater universe.

I can of course understand why other views are held and will happily change the above if someone discloses an error in it.

Theo (C103/10) - Mathematics : Regarding the little signs to be attached to everything and mathematical symbols, I had it in mind only that one day swarms of micro-robots could scamper about the world and our notepads sticking little flags on everything to show us what symbols to write down and what to do with them to obtain the solution to any problem. Anyone could then do mathematics with ease. A step towards it would be an intelligent pocket computer for exams. Just let its bits run around over the question paper and then have them dodge around the answer paper jotting down the responses for you. Hold the paper up to the scanner to get a pass and chuck it away. Surely it would be the most energy saving way to obtain a certificate in that it would let us decommission just about all the education system. It would only be a small advance on today, where, with the better software packages, if you have to do something complicated a friendly looking little character can be called on screen to point at everything to click on to get it done.

I note these items for those who may have missed them because they raise several interesting points about life and evolution.

Primitive 1: About 200 different fungi, viruses and bacteria established themselves on the recently vacated Russian space station. It got to the stage where the crew ran out of cleaning rags and to carry on had to use their soiled underwear to try and remove colonies of these things off of working and other surfaces. Much time was lost dealing with the fungi that lived off practically anything and spread over work surfaces, and a good deal went on patching plastic insulation being consumed by the bacteria. In the small station powerful sterilising chemicals could not be used because the crew would have been affected. Over a few weeks some of the bacteria gradually increased their virulence in the low gravity but rapidly reverted to normal in a few days when returned to earth. That effect has been found repeatable in laboratory centrifuges.

Primitive 2: Humans, pigs and birds are repositories to greater or lesser extent of flue. The three human, pig and bird viruses do not have single strand RNA. They each have eight short RNA strands. Normal variations in flue arise from slight changes in the strands, they may for example lead to lung tissue producing excessive fluid. It seems that the great flue pandemics, such as that of 1917 which killed millions, may have arisen from when, say, the pig and bird viruses had swapped a complete strand. Apparently when that happens the resulting flue virus could be sufficiently virulent to, for example, cause lung tissue to dissolve.

Implications of all that would seem to be that primitive life has far more flexibility and aggression in it than we generally assume, and who can say but that a great deal of evolution of higher life forms might have come just from viruses, etc., swapping things about long ago. And possibly we have not been visited by aliens because no advance civilisation has yet been able to conquer its bugs.

Logic: It is said logic is value neutral. But logic prefers rightness. And rightness is goodness. So logic prefers goodness. And that is only not so if one has declared a badness to be a goodness. Comments?

Albert Dean